Hi guys and on behalf of Rabishan, we would like to thank you for your replies.

Rabishan is our team mate and perhaps he didnt explain much (so sorry, as English is not our first language). Permit me to explain about Woody3D. We purchased the Woody3D because the trees made with it is low poly and it looked really good (although it is Semi realistic) but the tree looked quite natural. Unfortunately to use Woody3D trees mesh we would have to either:

1. Convert the Woody mesh files to a file format using C++
or
2. Modify the engine to load the Woody mesh file format

Unfortunately the 2nd option really isn't an option for us as we couldn't afford to purchase Esenthel Engine Source Code to add the Woody mesh file format into the object importer function. This leaves us with one last option if we still opt to go with Woody3D, which is convert the Woody mesh files into a file format using C++.

Good people and community of Esenthel, could you advice us how can we do this?

P/S: I think the structure and style for Woody3D is similar with SpeedTree. Has anyone successfuly intregrated Speedtree object into Esenthel before (without exporting to obj/fbx format)? If yes, the trick might help us as well.

did you try asking for help on woody3d support on how to convert their models?
you don't need full EE sources, you can write simple function:
bool loadwoody3d(Mesh &mesh, Str file_name){}
of course if you know the format of woody3d or have access to its raw data (vtxs/faces)

I'll make a tutorial for manual creation of mesh through code from custom vtx/face

Please forgive me if what I about to ask sound stupid, but there something I don't get. If we doing the coding based on ur suggestion, then how do we call the Woody3D Mesh object from the editor itself so that we could insert it the terrain?

woody have provided me with the binary files. now can you please tell me where to create the function to load the trees and maybe some tips.
also i actually wanted to import these trees in the editor environment. so that it would be easy to deal with.
so how would it help me after i created the function you suggested.

(05-03-2011 10:36 AM)Esenthel Wrote: You cant do this in the editor. Just make your own exe and manually call import function.

Sorry but I don't get what you mean. What do you mean by manually call import function? Could you elaborate a little more so that maybe we get an idea of how we could import 3rd party mesh format such as Woody3D into Esenthel without needing to access into Esenthel Core source code.

Please correct us if the following idea of ours is wrong:

Esenthel Engine ---> Custom Import Mesh Program (our own program? Load inside Esenthel Engine) --> Browse for Custom Mesh (i.e. Woody3D Tree mesh files after compiled) --> Load into Esenthel World Editor -- > Place Tree mesh on Terrain (using [Insert] key) as if it is an Object --> Use World Editor to move around the Custom Mesh File

Is the above flow sound right? Or we getting the whole wrong idea of what you were trying to tell us?

You know the structure for the woody files, now you just need to know the structure for wave front obj file (or esenthel mesh file, but for that you can just use the converter.exe, or any other file type you prefer).

Make a function like Esenthel said and parse the info from the woody file and convert it to a wavefront obj structure - good site: http://www.hodge.net.au/sam/blog/?p=250.
You'd be outputting the data in plain text while saving it as a *.obj. Read everything in that blog. There's also a code sample in python: "Writing the OBJ data to Disk using Python File I/O" and that's basically what you want your converter to do (from woody3d mesh to wavefront obj). I never tried to convert x to y before either.. seems tricky ha, good luck!

Thanks for the reply guys. Seriously we really appreciate it. You guys have been a nice lots, and do come back with real advice.

Don't mean to sound arrogant, but just would like to point out that this is just solves (if we able to solve it) only a part of it. If we look differebt angle, I am getting the feeling that Esenthel may not have the flexibility to add on 3rd party tools. What we plan to do with Woody3D and Esenthel seem like may not materialized after all.

Woody3D is just one of the many SDK and add ons thats available in the market. We also planned to use FaceFX which creates realistic facial animation from audio files which we plan to use it to create characters that can "talk" with certain facial animation from inside of Esenthel. From the looks of the current situation, I think we may not able to use this for Esenthel. Please correct me if I am wrong guys, I dont mean to offend.

But nonetheless, Esenthel still a powerful engine and so far we are happy with it plus its come with a lot of features that we can't resist. I hope there is ways we could include 3rd party SDKs, plugins and addons to enhance the core Engine.

Again thanks for the valuable advice.

(05-05-2011 12:32 AM)Dandruff Wrote: You know the structure for the woody files, now you just need to know the structure for wave front obj file (or esenthel mesh file, but for that you can just use the converter.exe, or any other file type you prefer).

Make a function like Esenthel said and parse the info from the woody file and convert it to a wavefront obj structure - good site: http://www.hodge.net.au/sam/blog/?p=250.
You'd be outputting the data in plain text while saving it as a *.obj. Read everything in that blog. There's also a code sample in python: "Writing the OBJ data to Disk using Python File I/O" and that's basically what you want your converter to do (from woody3d mesh to wavefront obj). I never tried to convert x to y before either.. seems tricky ha, good luck!

I am not entirely sure what's limiting you... So you want the trees generated from Woody3d to work in Esenthel? To do that you must convert that format into a format that Esenthel, or any other engine you're using for that matter, recognizes (be it a wavefront obj/Esenthel mesh).

It doesn't matter if you're using the Unreal/Irrlicht/Hero/Leadwerks engine, or whatever engine you may find, it's up to you, the programmer to add in whatever feature you want, hence 3rd party component. Since Esenthel is in c++ and Woody3D is too, there's not much that would limit you from a successful integration, unless of course you want to merge the actual rendering engine from Woody3D into Esenthel.. you'd need a beefy wallet for that

Same goes for FaceFX. There's even a Facial Animation tutorial in 4 - Demos, Game Basics\Demos. I'm positive you can get FaceFX to work using that.